Winning Strategies to Sell Senior Living When Rates Increase
Sooner or later, every senior living community is going to have a rate increase. While a rate increase may fill senior living salespeople with dread, there’s no reason to let it deter you from achieving your sales goals.
Here are our winning strategies to sustain your sales levels in the face of higher prices:
Promote your differentiators
If it’s been a while since the last time you took a serious look at your competitors and how your senior living community is different from them, now’s the time. Your prospective residents want to know what your community has to offer them that the other communities nearby don’t.
Once you have a clear picture of your differentiators in the market, use them while discovering your prospects’ needs, wants, and desires. Matching your differentiators with their concept of the ideal senior living community is a powerful connection-making strategy. If YOU don’t know your differentiating factors, your prospects never will.
Focus on how senior living improves their life
It’s important to remember that older adults and their loved ones are looking to senior living as a way to improve their life. Ask them in what way do they think their / their parent’s life will be enhanced in a senior living community. What about their current situation needs the most attention now? What is currently lacking in their daily life? Then build the value around that.
Don’t forget to help them make a fair comparison between their current living expenses and what is included in your community’s monthly fee. If your rates are going up, chances are they’re seeing increases in the cost of their other expenses like buying groceries, eating out, paying the electric bill, home repairs, and homeowner’s insurance. Make your rate increase a non-issue by showing them that they’re already experiencing price increases in their living expenses.
Target your income qualified prospects
When your rates go up, you may need to re-evaluate who is still income qualified. If you find that your pipeline is now full of those who can’t or can barely afford your community, perhaps it’s time to extend your reach or target a different audience. Here’s a good opportunity to reconnect with your professional referral sources. Ideas to try include asking your local realtors about neighborhoods where homes are increasing in value, then target them with a direct mail campaign. Or reach out to some financial advisors about partnering in a retirement planning lunch-n-learn event at your community.
Review and revise your sales toolbox
It’s always helpful to have some enticing incentives you can put on the table to close a stuck sale. Work with your executive director or regional director of sales and marketing to review your current incentives and see how they can be sweetened to offset higher rates. Some winning incentives include a discount off the community fee, paying the community fee in installments, coupons for guest meals or hair salon visits, or free rent for their birthday month in the first year.
Before you jump to waive the community fee, remember that there are a lot of steps between the full fee and waiving it. Try starting off at 10% off then walk it in until it’s too good for them to pass up.
Successfully managing a senior living community price increase hinges on promoting your differentiators, focusing on how your community will improve your prospect’s life, and revising your sales strategies. By working some or all these tactics, you can sustain your sales volume and reach your goals.
Grow Your Occupancy offers senior living sales training, coaching, and online learning to help you develop the skills you need for sales success in the face of price increases. Find out more about Grow Your Occupancy: book your free 30-minute consultation today.
